Helen's Soliloqy (All's Well That Ends Well) - Poem by William Shakespeare

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Our remedies oft in ourselves do lieWhich we ascribe to heaven. The fated skyGives us free scope, only doth backward pullOur slow designs when we ourselves are dull.What power is it which mounts my love so high,That makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye?The mightiest space in fortune nature bringsTo join like likes and kiss like native things.Impossible be strange attempts to thoseThat weigh their pains in sense and do supposeWhat hath been cannot be. Who ever stroveTo show her merit that did miss her love?

Comments about Helen's Soliloqy (All's Well That Ends Well) by William Shakespeare

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie...........Who ever strove
To show her merit that did miss her love? ......good answer and good question...a poem with all Shakespeare's wise craft...great(Report)Reply

All’s well that ends well – really? Does that mean anything goes? All's fair in love and war? A deep pit of moral ambiguity here. Helen herself is aware of this: Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie
Which we ascribe to heaven.(Report)Reply

All's Well That Ends Well is often described as a dark or problem play, distinguished from the earlier, more cheerful comedies by unpleasant characters and a sophisticated bitterness toward human relations, all capped off with a happy ending that is nothing of the sort. In part, these criticisms are unfair. The characters in general are a pleasant group, distinguished either by the wisdom of experience (the King of France, Lafew, the Countess) or by basic decency and good intentions (Diana, the First Lord and Second Lord Dumaine) . The only truly unsympathetic figure in the supporting cast is Parolles, who is less a villain than a comically value- free rogue. The ending, while unsatisfactory to our sensibilities, seems to please the characters, and the play is far from being a tragedy.
There are unpleasant themes percolating amid the comedy, however. Specifically, the gloom of decay and old age hangs heavily over the older characters, none of whom seem to have long to live. At the same time, for a play ostensibly concerned with romance, All's Well takes a harshly cynical view of sexual love. We expect coarse humor from characters like the Clown, who exist to provide smutty comic relief, and cynics like Parolles, but even the romantic heroine, Helena, indulges in sexual banter, and has a low opinion of male sexual behavior in general. This view is justified, the play suggests, since the successful central deception, the bedroom switch that enables Helena to become pregnant by her husband, Bertram, and thus force him to stay by her side, hinges on the fact that in the dark, all women are alike to men.
Bertram, who abandons Helena, tries to seduce an innocent woman, and only turns repentant in the play's final scene. We may be meant to perceive him as salvageable in some way, and to expect that he will mature in marriage, but the play gives us only a few hints of this, preferring to focus on his obvious flaws.
The resourceful Helena, meanwhile, loved by everyone (save for Bertram) , cuts a far more appealing figure. However, her relentless pursuit of a man who is obviously unworthy of her has the unfortunate effect of diminishing her appeal as the play goes on. Nothing stands in Helena's way as she determinedly pursues the man she loves, and while we may admire her, by the time she appears to triumphantly show Bertram how he has been tricked, we no longer like her as much as we did- and our opinion of her good taste, after so long watching her chase a cad, is all but gone. The final scene demands that we celebrate the triumph of love- but it seems less a fariy-tale ending than a cynically contrived close to a cynical comedy, in which true love takes a back seat to manipulation.
[sparknotes/shakespeare](Report)Reply